


Soul Tied With The Balance

by AgentRed



Series: One shots [4]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mentioned Bruce Wayne, Mentioned Dick Grayson, Mentioned Tim Drake, Minor Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent, One Shot, Past Character Death, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:08:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24207217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentRed/pseuds/AgentRed
Summary: Everyone was born with a tattoo. It either resembled something of significance to your soulmate or your path to death.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Damian Wayne
Series: One shots [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1722679
Kudos: 90





	Soul Tied With The Balance

**Author's Note:**

> Only slight mention of ship, Tim and Kon, I don't really ship anything personally but one of my friends does so I hinted it.

Everyone was born with a tattoo. It either resembled something of significance to your soulmate or your path to death. In the moments before meeting either, your tattoo will feel like it's burning and afterwards, should you not be dead, encountering your soulmate with make it feel warm. 

Damian had one that wasn't exactly much to go off of, on his sternum: X2 ; it didn't appear to mean anything in the behaviour of his death, it wasn't ÷2 as if he was going to be cut in half somehow nor was it -2 as if he was going to get hurt at two major points and end up dying. So it might have something to do with a soulmate. In a way, it was soothing, usually it meant one would die of old age, yet for a similar reason it made him on edge. Damian didn't know how he'd die, how he would know when his time was coming and how he'd make preparations for it.

Then he met his "brothers". Drake had a similar tattoo on his wrist, one that connected him to his soulmate, a clone. The clone in turn had a tattoo of a coffee bean. Damian interrogated them both to fully understand what he should look out for. Any pain that was out of place, he would know. 

Alert he was, at an almost constant. Then Heretic. The pain didn't nearly alarm him as much as Heretics origins. A clone, destined to kill him.

Adrenaline did nothing to numb the burn of the tattoo but stopped him from fully registering his wounds, the arrows. It also didn't stop the pain of the sword. The world fading, the feeling of failure and betrayal.

The relief of escaping the afterlife destined for him was almost suffocating but he held the trauma under wraps. He couldn't fail again, Damian would not disappoint or worry his father again.

His tattoo was fading but he doubted it would fade completely. It could easily manifest into something else, his next death or someone that could sooth his nightmares. At this point, Damian was desperate for the afterlife to stop crawling through his dreams, he held onto what hope his paranoia would let him. 

One night, patrol was slow. He hardly noticed Todd approach him. Damian hadn't been sleeping, not as bad as Drake but he knew what to blame his lack of awareness on. It was especially embarrassing since Todd seemed to purposefully make himself be easily noticed.

"What are you doing here? I thought you weren't in Gotham." Damian muttered even as Todd crouched beside him, removing his mask and looking out on the dim lit streets of Gotham through a red domino.

"Thought I'd check up on you." He replied, popping a sweet into his mouth. Nicotine gum, Damian guessed. "Death isn't that great unless you really hate the world, which, I guess, I do, but I know you probably don't, or at least don't care about it."

Damian glared at the older vigilante from the corner of his eye, despite his pupils being obscured. He could tell Todd got the message.

Todd sighed, "Look, Kiddo, if you ever need to talk about it or get hooked up to a professional, just come to me, okay? You may not be going crazy but I know what-"

"What's your tattoo?"

Todd blinked at the sudden question a few times before he seemed slump, frame seeming much smaller than a few moments ago, an echo of the boy he used to be, "A crowbar."

"Does it hurt?"

"Yes."

"Is it going away?"

"No."

"Can-can I see it?" They both ignored the crack in his voice.

"Yes."

Todd's fingers hooked around his own collar and pulled it down. Damian could see the crowbar wrapping around half his neck, faded and parallel to a scar. The scar perplexed Damian. He read the Outlaws files and didn't see anything to do with something that was soo obviously important, a wound that could kill, healed.

"It stopped fading around the time I became Red Hood."

"Thank you..." Damian spoke, withdrawn but desperate. He wanted help. He didn't know how to ask and this was an opportunity blaring at him.

"Here, it's a list of contacts, you can look into them all you want but they can help." Todd readjusted his collar and held out a slip of paper, Damian not seeing where he got it from.

He let out a little scoff but took the paper anyway, folding it roughly to make a show of uncaring and annoyed.

"I must continue my patrol now, don't get into any warehouses in the meantime." Damian shot out a grapple line and left the other, not giving him time to say anything. He didn't follow.

He managed to reach out through the contacts. 

When he heard that Father had brutally beat Todd and disowned him, Damian couldn't help but fear that a new Robin would come along, kill him and replace him. Todd tattoo had been linked to two incidents, Joker and the scar on his neck, why could his be as well?

Penguin turned out to not even be dead and he could feel the tension between the family when Grayson arrived with evidence on the latest case.

Damian was not surprised to hear a shouting match between Nightwing and Batman later that night.

Batman was more aggressive on patrol that night.

Nightwing cleared up an entire gang within a week in another city that was barely touched by forces of good.

Oracle exposed multiple Villains identities. 

Red Robin hacked into a secret organisation and put their production on hold.

They all worked harder.

And Red Hood. Red Hood killed. A relapse. And soo soon after losing two, he lost another one.

Damian didn't know when this family started to break but he knew that it probably was long before Dick Grayson lost his parents.


End file.
